Digital character General Grievous just shows off the leap forward the artists made from Episode I to Episode III.

Coleman also takes pride in skin and lighting advancements. “There’s great use of subsurface scattering that you can see in the tight close-ups of Grievous and Yoda. With Yoda, you have top of head to chin shots where his sustained close-ups are very realistic. The skin has improved by leaps and bounds here. We’ve also put in global illumination, created new shaders to handle skin because we specifically knew George would want to come in closer. Yoda has developed into a very strong supporting actor in this movie. He has some very important scenes where he delivers important story points and his lines are delivered more convincingly with the live actors. Both Yoda and Grievous are fully animated with no MoCap. We wanted something special about Grievous’ performance and wanted him to have an animated look. We wanted the control of his physicality.

Coleman admits that the biggest challenge of all was introducing a CG Yoda in Episode II and making him totally CG in Episode III: “Watto was like a setup. George smiled when he saw the first animation performance of Watto. He’d always known that he going to ask for a CG Yoda on Episode I, but didn’t tell us until we were preparing for Episode II so we wouldn’t get freaked out. The challenge for me was that all of the acting was going to be a puppet and all of the fighting was going to be CG. I decided that we needed to introduce some more flexibility in the acting so it wouldn’t be too much a jump for the audience during the fighting. We updated him just a bit. And now we are rewarded with a fully CG Yoda at the center of the action.

“There’s no question about doing it anymore: George knows we can. He would call Episode II Anakin in Toontown to me. He loves animation. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we show him animation and he’s literally bouncing in his seat. He loves animated movies and animated characters, particularly in his movies because it makes them exotic. Having a fat, floating character or a little green man tells you that you are in a different world. He always wanted to get past people in rubber heads so computer animation has really freed him up stylistically, visually and creativity and you can actually see it in his expression. He’s serene. He’s in his element in post-production.”

Bill Desowitz is editor of VFXWorld.